Quantized controllers distributed over a network: An industrial case study

We consider the problem of regulating pressures across large-scale hydraulic networks. We investigate the use of a class of piece-wise constant control laws which take value in a finite number of values and whose transition from one value to another occurs when the measurements cross certain thresholds. We show that these controllers guarantee set-point pressure regulation with an arbitrarily large domain of convergence. The use of this class of control laws is motivated by the need to exchange information among controllers distributed over the network.